Overview

FilmArtsy is a social platform for film professionals to showcase work, build credibility, and collaborate on projects. It combines elements of LinkedIn and creative portfolios tailored specifically for the film industry.

My Role

• Built and shipped the core mobile application using Flutter and Android.
• Collaborated closely with UI/UX designers to implement polished, responsive interfaces.
• Partnered with product managers to refine feature scope and optimise user flows.
• Integrated RESTful backend APIs in tandem with backend engineers to ensure seamless data delivery.

Key Technical Challenges

Scalable State Management

As the app expanded with rich profiles, dynamic feeds, and collaboration features, managing reactive UI updates and asynchronous data flows became increasingly complex.

I implemented MobX for state management, enabling a clear separation of concerns through observable state, actions, and reactions. This architectural shift resulted in highly predictable state updates, improved codebase maintainability, and faster iteration cycles for new features.

Performance Optimisation

Rendering image-heavy feeds caused noticeable performance bottlenecks, particularly on lower-end devices.

To solve this, I implemented optimised image caching and resolution-aware content delivery, ensuring the app only requested and served appropriately sized assets based on device screen density. Combined with lazy loading and heavily optimised widget rebuilds, this achieved consistently smooth scrolling and a vastly improved user experience.

Outcomes & Learnings

The project reinforced a recurring pattern in mobile product delivery: architecture and performance decisions made early have outsized downstream impact on delivery speed and user experience.

• Design state management early; it becomes costly to refactor later.
• Align on API contracts upfront to reduce integration bugs.
• Performance is not a phase, it's a continuous process.